Boeing Autonomous Airplane Crash

 

....good!!!

 

What's inflight wifi? I fly for Frontier. We do newspapers and magazines.

 

Here it is straight out of Airbus Chief of Sales mouth!

https://apnews.com/d8d911a9f1844df1a314a42c346e74a4

 

I wonder how he would explain future crashes? No more pilots to blame

 

Qu'est-ce qui pourrait mal se passer?

 

Anyone younger then 45 will probably see single pilot. Those just entering the industry will most likely be automated away at some point. I will seriously start to worry when FedEx and UPS go single pilot, we won't be far behind.

Looking at the avhearld site the vast majority of incidents are pilot induced today. Taking the pilot out of most operations will most likely improve safety. I know it sounds bad but the facts are the facts.

A lot of the CA's job is ensuring compliance with regulations, and interacting with all facets of the operation. I personally do not see that job function going away. It may, and the job description may well change from "pilot" to "flight ops coordinator". Who knows.

But so much of our industry still operates in a labor intensive fashion.

 

There is no data on pilotless pax airline operations.

So to suggest removing the pilots would 'improve' safety is really groundless.

Let them implement it...and then. 30 years on compare the data.

Im betting the first pilotless hull loss will be astronomically expensive. and likely undermine public confidence in the technology.

 

I agree and any perceived pilot shortage could be quickly negated with single pilot airplanes. In the short 20 years I have been flying the pace of automation has exponentially increased. At the current rate if left unchecked it will greatly change the skill set of a “pilot”. Look how many new guys at the airlines never flew steam gauges ever in their careers. They went from g1000 to emb-175 with auto throttles and full automation. Not a knock on them but they have been trained, in my humble opinion, as more of a system operator than a stick and rudder pilot. When I started not so long ago everyone cut their teeth flying boxes in turbo props or passengers in b1900. Which turned anyone in to great “sticks” or spit them out. There was no automation to fall back on when things went south. Situational awareness was maintained in your head not looking at a line on a box. At the end of the day it is what it is, but it’s sad to see the art of a good stick going by the way side.

 

It's sad but only to us, who have spent countless hours doing turns around a point, soft field landings, and NDB approaches in Cessnas, to hone a skill that is essentially becoming irreverent. It's the same as the generation before us who flew as FE, or had navs, or the generation before them who navigated around the world in flying boats. Crazy how times have changed. While I don't wish I were dead, I do wish sometimes we were back in those days still, the golden age. A simpler time. Try not to let this job define you.

Aircraft in the future will be "piloted" simply by point and click if that...there will be no need to learn the four forces of flight, or how a stall feels (because it won't happen) etc. Training will be as much as you get when flying a DJI quad these days, the computers will handle all backend functions. The aircraft will all shoot 0/0 approaches, taking off and landing all by themselves. It won't be tomorrow but when it does happen it will seem like a blink of an eye.

My suggestion is to fully prepare yourself financially but not just for our job loss but for the roughly half of the world that will see them. Who knows what people will do for jobs. The movie Elysium is an interesting foreshading. Luckily we earn a good wage these days...use it to own the capital of future generations, do not waste it and spend it frivolously today.